Customer experience is the central metric to measure an organization’s success. In fact, 45.9% of businesses will consider it as their top priority for the next 5 years, followed by product (33.6%) and pricing (20.5%).
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the latest entrant to improve the customer experience. In 2019, AI and Machine learning accounted for 25% of all customer interactions.
AI can provide insights into a customer’s behavior, enabling companies to understand what a customer may expect from them. It also makes the entire purchasing journey a lot more smooth.
Using this technology can help a business understand the integrated and connected customer lifecycle, ensuring that they can deliver on the dynamic customer needs.
This article will primarily focus on:
- How will AI impact consumers?
- How does AI improve the customer experience?
- Do customers like AI?
The real-world use cases of Artificial Intelligence can be found in healthcare, retail, eCommerce, and other major industries.
How will AI Impact Consumers?
Around 30% of companies increased their investment in AI technology during the pandemic.
Consumers are gradually accepting that the person on the other side of the screen could actually be a robot - and they love it. Communication has become seamless, and the experience is improving twofold.
AI is impacting consumer behavior in the following three ways:
1. High Customer Satisfaction
Whether it’s through recommendations or quick responses, customers are happy with the services AI delivers. There is around a 30% to 50% increase in customer satisfaction when users have an AI experience.
2. Increased Brand Engagement
AI solutions drive consumers to engage more by presenting them with relevant products. They can analyze customer behavior and interact with users on a regular basis.
AI solutions drive consumers to engage more by presenting them with relevant products. They can analyze customer behavior and interact with users on a regular basis.
With AI-based targeting, customers are more likely to stay hooked.
3. Improve Customer Retention
As customer satisfaction multiples, they will stay with the company or the brand. AI offers retargeting strategies, personalization of the experience, and analysis into customers for finding ways to retain them and become more loyal.
How does AI Improve Customer Experience?
Artificial Intelligence or AI provides valuable insights into the customer’s expectations. It helps companies serve products that match and surpass them.
AI improves the customer experience by processing volumes of data and making decisions that fulfill customer needs.
Here are 5 ways AI improves the customer experience:
- Personalized Experience
Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon are prime examples of companies using AI to deliver a personalized experience.
Purchase recommendations on Amazon, movie recommendations on Netflix, and songs you may like on Spotify are the pure form of AI personalization. These companies use data to understand your preferences and suggest products and entertainment you may like.
Personalized suggestions provide an amazing shopping experience. If someone purchases and looks for low-cost products, the AI will suggest products that match the criteria. Customers are delighted when they find fantastic products within their budget.
- Faster Communication
Statista studies show that 30% to 40% of customers prefer to interact with AI chatbots to get answers to their queries. This is because of the immediate responses that the bots provide.
More than 90% of consumers believe that getting faster responses and query resolution is key to improving their experience. AI chatbots help people fix problems by raising tickets, offering common answers to common questions, filing complaints, and redirecting to the right service personnel.
Customers like it when they can interact seamlessly with the service agents. Faster communication entails customers trusting you because you can respond much quicker than your competitors.
- Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is a primary feature of Artificial Intelligence in improving the customer experience. By understanding how the customers feel, brands can identify what to deliver to generate positive feelings.
For example, social media AI tools for Facebook and Twitter can help identify sentiments using sentiment analysis solutions. They can understand what customers are saying about their brand and how they feel about their interactions.
By knowing this, companies can improve their products quickly or create new offerings that lead to positive sentiment. While facing service requests, sentiment analysis tools also help employees categorize complaints based on different sentiments and prioritize them.
- Virtual Assistance
Around 70% of customers used a chatbot in the past year.
Users want a chatbot that can stay with them during purchase. It makes them feel that the brand is available for them all the time. Since chatbots are online 24x7, customers have a great experience by connecting with them anytime they want.
Chatbots provide product suggestions, help customers see whether products are in stock or sold out, the ability to make payments, book tickets, schedule appointments, and much more. Chatbots like Alexa and Siri are prime examples of such assistants.
- Behavior Analytics
When companies understand customer behavior, they can create products that match their preferences and enhance the customer experience twofold.
AI processes vast amounts of data to deliver valuable insights into customer behavior. By analyzing past purchases, searches, etc., companies understand what the customers want and how they are looking for it.
Through predictive analytics, companies can also forecast what the customers will require in the future. When customers get the products they want without even thinking about them, they experience a delight that leads to high retention and loyalty.
Do Customers Like AI?
40% of customers use the voice search feature - a number which will significantly increase in the coming years. That is only one application of AI in improving the customer experience.
With virtual assistants and personalized recommendations becoming powerful, companies will heavily invest in AI technology to reap major benefits.
As AI can improve the customer experience, people will prefer AI interactions in the future.
AI solutions also provide data analytics, which will help brands deliver better products and services. It will lead to convenience for customers and increase the retention rate as well.
AI is transforming technology in the field of customer experience.
Companies will now focus more on AI implementation with human personnel rather than creating an isolated AI infrastructure. That is how they can get closer to becoming a customer-centric organization.